


The Golden Girl

by imdisappointingmyparents



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Psychological Horror, Puberty, Religiosity, Sexual Repression, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdisappointingmyparents/pseuds/imdisappointingmyparents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is a work of art. A beautiful sculpture of good deeds and Christian teachings.</p><p>She is a display, never to be touched. Never to touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Golden Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This work has not been beta read.

She's born in a thunderstorm. Wind and rain and hail beat on the windows of the hospital as she comes into the world.

Healthy. Beautiful. A perfect baby girl.

She is heavenly, and so they name her after the king of the heavens.

Jupiter.

Her hometown is tiny; you could walk it end to end in twenty minutes, tops. It's small, but not cute. There are no homemade soap shops or kitschy mom and pop coffee houses. Just churches and gas stations and the reek of animal manure. It's the sort of town where everybody knows everybody and everybody's business.

Everyone is watching. Evaluating. The eyes of her neighbors and the eyes of God. Her parents tell her to be mindful. She is. Straight A's, volunteering at the food bank, charging along with her teammates in every sport she can fit into her schedule. She's the first to raise her hand, always leaving gifts for her teachers, everyone's favorite Sunday school teacher.

"Teacher's pet," the other students call her. "Suck up." "Goody goody."

She sits upon a pedestal and everyone watches her. In a town where everyone watches, she'll be looked up to. Her parents are proud. Her teachers write favorably of her. Her pastor calls her a good little lamb.

Jupiter is a good girl. Everybody says so.

\------------

She's thirteen and certain she's dying. There's blood pouring down her legs and it won't stop and she's never been so scared in her life.

Her mother cleans her up, gets her a pad. She tells her that she is a woman now and must bear the Original Sin. The guilt of Eve's mistake must be borne by all her daughters.

Her body is changing, curling and lengthening and twisting around like metal melting in a refinery. She doesn't have much in the way of breasts or curves but her legs are long and defined from years of vigorous exercise. Her face is pretty too, in a boyish, carefree sort of sense.

Boys notice her. She doesn't notice them.

She's careful to be modest, to ward off the boys with long skirts and baggy shirts. Her parents remind her never to touch, never to give in to temptation. She cannot let the Spirit of Fornication into her heart. If she does, she'll be led astray and fall into sin.

Jupiter is a good girl. She endures the leers and stares and doesn't give seduction even a moment's thought. The boys don't tempt her, not in the slightest. She blanks when her friends gossip with her over greasy french fries at the local diner and she can't give an answer when they ask her about her crushes.

Jupiter doesn't like boys. It's because she's chaste. She's a good girl.

\------------

It's late evening in June. They're in the woods a few miles out of town. The humidity clings to her skin and summer sweat bleeds through her clothes. She'd growing and changing and she feels disgusting. Mosquitoes buzz around in noxious clouds. There are already angry red lumps rising on her skin where she didn't spray enough Off.

Her church group's going camping. They've claimed a campground full of dilapidated cabins and the smell of mold and charcoal. It's an adventure, they tell her. It builds character. She's spending time marveling at God's most splendid creations. It's what teenagers need to do these days, her church leaders say. Less time texting and flirting and gazing into mirrors, more time out in the simplicity of nature. Unplugged.

She's supposed to feel purer out here.

Jupiter feels the opposite.

She's with a friend from school, stargazing. The night sky is riddled with stars, untainted by light pollution. Galaxies swirl and nebulae birth stars and black holes swallow up planets and they're billions of miles away from it all, curled up in a distant corner of the Milky Way. Jupiter's namesake is up there somewhere. An ancient hurricane rages in its atmosphere.

The old astronomers called stars "heavenly bodies". It feels like a contradiction. The heavens are ethereal, incorporeal. Bodies are tactile and ugly and crawling with skin and blood and bones and impulses. Built to err.

There's a reason they're called "sins of the flesh", after all.

The girl to her left has long, caramel hair that fans out onto the grass. Her skin has been baking in the sun like clay in a kiln. It's a pleasant, warm brown now, relatively free of the blighting acne that struck virtually every other teenager Jupiter knows, including herself. Her hands are splayed out on the ground, open. Hands are for holding, hitting, touching. Caressing.

Jupiter keeps her hands to herself.

\------------

There are words for little girls with thoughts like hers. Aberrants. Deviants. Wicked. A girl brushes up against her in the locker room before gym class and her stomach is full of moths. She hates it. Hates the doubt in her mind and the certainty in her heart. She is  _that way._ The girl pulls up her gym shorts, flashes her a friendly smile, and walks out.

Jupiter doesn't know what she did to deserve this. She's always been such a good girl.

But good girls don't want to hold other girls in their arms the way Jupiter wants to. Good girls don't want to  _touch._

She's in the library after class one day when she comes upon a book about a man named Pavlov and his dogs. She learns about conditioning, neural shortcuts, grouping of stimuli.

She takes to wearing an elastic hair tie just above her wrist, where the soft flesh of her arm goes briefly slack between the taut skin of her hand and the muscly joint of her elbow. Whenever she thinks impure thoughts, she snaps the hairband against her arm.

Association. Expectation. Adaptation.

Someone is always watching.

She'll be a good girl if it kills her.

\------------

Jupiter is sixteen years old when the beautiful porcelain vase that is her (" _do not touch," scolds the curator_ ) begins to crack. She's chatting with her team after practice when one of the seniors invites her on a whim to a secret party that they're going to throw in a dilapidated barn off the interstate next week. Jupiter swallows. It's not that she's pure. Her father is a brewer and has shared a few drinks with her. She's stayed up past curfew and sworn a few times, usually after taking a less-than-graceful tumble during soccer games. But those offenses are minor. Forgettable. Going to this party might invite the devil into her soul. She's heard of it happening. A terrible, impossible change. Possessions. Invocations. Exorcisms. Ugly words float around her head but she hears herself saying "yes".

The party's lights leak out of the cracks in the barn like blood from a wound. Music booms and reverberates across the deserted fields where once there was plenty. Jupiter stares at the den of the reckless, of wild, untempered youth, and steals a glance up at the cold, uncaring moon.

Everyone is either already in the barn or asleep in their beds back in town, dreaming of all the things the pastor told them to lock away. No one's out here but her.

No one is watching.

She walks into the barn.

The music is dreadful. The booze is worse. But she chokes down watery beer after watery beer and takes in the dancing and screaming all about her as a pleasant buzz smothers her nerves. She dances, clumsily, with her arms above her head and her dirty blonde hair flopping about. And before long she's dancing with someone. A pretty girl with generous curves and hair the color of rust. Jupiter's seen her around the halls of her high school, but can't even try to put a name to face. The pretty redhead doesn't seem to care. Her eyes are deep and blue, like pools of water leading to deep, underground caverns. They capture Jupiter's and refuse to let go. There are hands on her hips before long, lips on her neck, a soft, warm body grinding into hers. She's surrounded by people, lost in a sea of eyes. People are looking. Ogling. Judging.

Everyone is watching.

Jupiter wants to stop, knows she has to stop, but her hands betray her and wander and  _touch._

When she gets home she snaps her hair tie against her wrist so many times it breaks. Then she digs into her flesh with her nails.

She's not a good girl. And everyone knows.

\------------

Her pastor recommends the Summer Scouts. A reform camp where she can stay for the summer and try to cleanse herself of sin. Her parents nod sagely. A fine choice. Perfect for healing an impure child.

She's not a good girl. Maybe she never was.

But she can try to be one.

\------------

"Hey there, Group West," the Bonfire Captain says, smiling that sickly sweet smile he reserves for the worst of the worst, "Feel like meeting the devil tonight?"

Venus swallows. Neptune snorts. Jupiter sighs.

They should have known.

They do their duties for the night, pack up their few things, and make their way through the woods to the cabin where the devil lies in wait. Venus is avoiding everyone's eyes. Neptune is Snapchatting. How she's even getting cell service out here, Jupiter has no idea.

She doesn't know what Venus and Neptune have done. Figured it was none of her business. Neptune was far more interested in talking shit about Group South (not that Jupiter felt much like defending them), and Venus was much more partial to smiling and nodding and agreeing. They made an odd trio, the three of them. Mean girl Neptune. Tomboy Jupiter. Shy-shy Venus. How they ever managed to get along in the first place is a miracle among miracles, but to everyone's surprise they all get along pretty well.

They get to the cabin and marvel at the state of it. It's half-rotted with mold and fungus, with taped-over windows, holes in the roof, and illegally installed electrical systems. Venus tries to think of something positive to say and comes up empty. Neptune wastes no time in snarking about its every flaw. Jupiter wonders if the Captain built it. He probably didn't even think he was doing anything wrong. She chuckles at the thought.

Venus unpacks while Neptune and Jupiter check out the shacks. The whole place looks like something out of a fantasy novel. Plants and flowers of every kind have reclaimed the space, turning the dull grey-brown rooms into rainbows of flora and beautiful decrepitude. A hidden, secluded garden, just for them. Sunlight from one of the holes in the roof catches in Neptune's soft brown hair. In the filtered light of the cabin she looks supernaturally beautiful. Her eyes gleam with intelligence and mischief. Her skin is warm and brown and inviting.

Jupiter snaps her hair tie against her wrist.

The two part ways for a bit and Jupiter inspects an ornate cabinet leaning against the wall. There's a different kind of lily on each shelf. The beauty of it is startling. She wonders if the captain did it. She doubts it, but she also likes to think she's wrong about people sometimes.

She's pretty sure she was wrong about Neptune when they first met. There's a loveliness under the veneer of coldness and superiority, Jupiter likes to think. Like an ocean on a distant world, frozen over with ice, hiding strange, wonderful life deep within itself.

Neptune comes out of the kitchen. Jupiter beckons her over to the cabinet. They crowd over the arrangement of flowers in silent awe. Jupiter is surrounded by beautiful things. She forgets, for a moment, that the devil is nipping at her heels.

She leans in to point something out to her and puts a bit too much weight on the ancient, rotted cabinet, which creaks like the world coming asunder and sloughs away, leaving a cloud of dust like moths and unspoken regrets. Neptune grabs Jupiter by the shoulders and pulls her out of the way. The storm of sound echoes and clashes and they stay in their awkward embrace until it's over. The beautiful, exquisite thing is gone forever, and it's all her fault.

Her touch is as tainted as her soul. She messes up everything that meets her.

Her eyes blur a little and she tells Neptune the truth about her, that she's a walking wasteland and that everything she touches is ruined. Neptune scoffs.

"You're so chill about everyone's bullshit," she sighs, "and it makes me so mad. And then you won't extend even the slightest of that chill to yourself and that makes me  _even so madder._ "

She keeps talking, telling her there's no need for extra tears and guilt in a place that already tries to force those things out of them daily. Neptune's eyes are fierce and challenging but her words are kind. Loving, even.

Jupiter slides out of her hold and snaps her hair tie against her wrist. They aren't in contact anymore, but a connection persists. Like the hands of damned souls, holding tight to one another as the fires burn through their cores. She is wicked. She is wicked. She is wicked.

There's no place in this garden for her.

\------------

Neptune and Venus are out on patrol. Jupiter is in the cabin alone, toying absently with the dials on her radio and listening for sounds of the devil. There's something stirring inside her, churning and tingling and sickly-sweet like a sugary dessert in her stomach. Her hands shake. The boards creak. The stench of rot and dust is making her nauseous. Her hands clench and unclench. There's something moving in the air, pushing molecules of hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen aside. An unknown, unholy element, twisting and testing the fabric of reality, seeping into everything. Snaking into her lungs.

She's all alone, a girl and her radio, all wrapped up like a present for the devil to rip apart. But the devil only gets one moment. If she can last beyond that, she can kill it. It's what's expected of her.

Even a kid can kill the devil, after all.

She wonders what the others are up to. Neither had looked especially happy to go out by themselves in the woods. But they had each other. They'd be fine. Jupiter thinks of the two of them, bracing themselves against the unfathomable dark, holding tight to one another, resting in the safety and comfort of another human body. Something stirs in her again.

Jupiter snaps her hair tie against her wrist.

\------------

They're drunk and bored and full to the brim with bad ideas. Venus of all people suggests they pass the time with a round or two of Seven Minutes in Heaven. Neptune's eyes gleam. She's dangerous and inviting, like a whispered schoolgirl secret or a vial of amber liquor left unprotected on a low shelf. This is a bad idea. This is the best idea. Jupiter declares it her turn, surveys her fellow campers with mock scrutiny. Maybe it's the booze, but Neptune is looking even lovelier than when the two of them were poking around the forbidden garden. Her eyes are pools of melted bronze, and her nails, Jupiter notices for the first time, are perfectly sculpted.

Alcohol is the devil's invention. Pure, undiluted desire. And under its thrall, she picks Neptune.

There's a small broom closet in the back of the cabin. Neptune looks like there's a joke on her lips but she says nothing. The two enter and close the door, enveloping the world in stuffy darkness. Jupiter fumbles about for a bit, fingers running through what turns out to be a broom.

"How dare you confuse me with a broom," Neptune says, but there's amusement in her voice. Maybe even a little excitement.

Jupiter inhales.

Her hands wander like entities of their own until warm, slender hands wrap around their wrists. Jupiter can't reach her hair tie. Her pulse picks up. It's warm, so warm. Like an embrace. Like a spring morning after a winter locked away. Neptune's breath smells like cheap spearmint. Jupiter can just barely see her outline in the black velvet darkness. Neptune's thumbs make ticklish little circles on her hands, massaging her flesh. Jupiter's hands are itching for the tie on her wrist, but something about Neptune's steady breathing calms her, stills her shaking hands. Neptune's presence is cool and calming, like a deep, still, black lake. There's something unknowable swimming at the very bottom, but its ripples never reach the surface. She's intriguing in ways that raise the hairs on Jupiter's neck. They fumble awkwardly for a bit, and then Neptune comes in close and kisses her jaw, tenderly and a little nervously. Jupiter thinks briefly of a red-haired girl with deep blue eyes, of hating hands tearing into guilty flesh in a darkened bedroom adorned with crosses and radios.

She knows she's still being watched, but for once she doesn't want to care.

"It's not real if we don't say it out loud, right?" she asks, startled by her own voice.

"That's right," Neptune says, her voice devoid of knives or sarcasm, "No one can prove it. No one except us. It's your world against mine. A double lock. So it never happened unless we both say it did."

Jupiter thinks of contracts. Covenants. Hidden agreements made in shadow and moonlight.

"Niether of us is going to be that stupid, right?" Jupiter half-jokes.

"Of course. We both know better."

"I'm, um, kind of an idiot though."

Neptune scoffs.

"You liar. You're much better at keeping yourself quiet. I never would have if I knew you might be stupider than even me."

Jupiter pictures Neptune casually referencing  _The Screwtape Letters_ or expertly coming up with comebacks while taking on Group South and wonders how someone like that could possibly think of herself as stupid.

"Sorry," Jupiter says. It's a reflex. She's done bad things. And when you do bad things, you apologize. But those apologies never quite cleanse your tainted hands. So you apologize more. And more. "I'm just so—"

"Some things can't be taken back," Neptune cuts her off, "There are worse things than saying it directly, you know."

"Like, 'this feels right'."

There's a lump in her throat.

"And 'I'm just so happy'."

"Exactly," Neptune says, "What are you thinking saying things like that."

She doesn't know what she wants. Her heart and her brain are in a stalemate and she can't hear her parents' voices, telling her what to do, how to feel.

"I'm not. I'm not saying them. They're things anyone could've said about anybody. They're just in the air."

She swallows around the lump.

"'You mean so much to me'," she says. Her voice is shaking. "Anyone could've said that, about anyone." There are tears in her eyes. Neptune's outline blurs. "Not that I'm saying it."

"...You get it." Neptune's voice is kind, so kind. Kinder than the pastor or her parents or the  _snap-snap-snap_ of the gossiping teeth and tongues of her peers. Girls like her are supposed to sound devious and manipulative and wrong. But Neptune just sounds like she might cry. "The Midwest is great. All you have to do is not say it out loud. It's like a spell. And you can be as obvious as you want about everything else. You can wait it out forever, as long as you don't say it."

"I hope I can," Jupiter replies, "But even if I don't say it, I still feel it. Like a hand in the air. Holding tight."

That analogy made more sense in her head. Neptune is quiet. Jupiter wonders if she sounds like a moron to her. But—

"It's okay," Neptune says. There's a hand in her hair, soft and gentle. Careful, like she's afraid she'll break something. Cause it to crumble.

"Is it?"

"I said it's okay, so it's okay. Stop talking. Stop talking forever. I'm drunk. You're drunk. Can't see anything, double lock, nothing is happening."

There's a warmth in her chest, a private little ember, all her own. Jupiter doesn't know what love feels like, but maybe this is it.

She imagines her pastor clicking his tongue in disapproval, but Neptune's milk-and-honey voice brings her back to the present.

"Your hands, either way...are nice."

"You're right," Jupiter says, and means it. "This is nothing."

And she kisses her, full on the mouth. And she's never felt more truthful, more honest to the depths of her soul, than in that moment.

God damns all liars.

"And so is this."

Kisses her again.

"This too."

She gets more adventurous. Kisses Neptune's throat, her shoulder, her collarbone. Brings their hips together until they interlock like divided continents.

It's right. It's wrong. It's right.

No one is watching. Jupiter is a bad girl. And she doesn't give a fuck.

"You get it," Neptune breaths, "Oh. Exactly. Just...nothing. Like that hand in the air. You might think you're feeling it, but...It's nothing. It's nothing."

They're both crying now, but it feels alright, like something tight and vice-like around Jupiter's chest has come loose. She breathes easy for the first time.

They hold each other and don't speak until the rest of their seven minutes is up.

\------------

The sirens are going again, louder this time. Everyone's afraid. The devil is afoot. This isn't a game anymore. Neptune thinks it's her. She's so sure. After-School-Special Girl, who drinks alcohol like water and tempts without thinking, without meaning. Venus puts a hand on her shoulder and she shakes it off.

"Don't pity me," she growls.

The sirens get louder still. They're scared, unsure. The Captain isn't around, nor are any of the campers. No one to help them. They're wicked kids left to rot. Bad examples. Things to look at and point to and say "see? See? That's why you can't want what you want, be what you are. That's why what feels right is wrong."

Venus shivers. Neptune coughs. Jupiter shakes.

They decide to talk to God.

\------------

Their radios are arranged in a makeshift altar of incense and wire. They hold hands and pray. They don't have to pray to it, Neptune points out, but it just comes so easily to them when they sit around it. They prayer is comforting in its familiarity.

Jupiter turns the dial, looking for God. They think they can hear the devil every now again, hissing through the static between channels. Jupiter bristles. Her stomach churns in that sickly-sweet way again. She tells herself it's the liquor. That's all.

The devil never stays on one frequency, but God is easy to find. He's at 109.8 FM. He's in the middle of a sermon when they dial in. Jupiter sits quietly, all her focus on the static-ridden promise of salvation.

But there is no promise. No salvation, not for her.

_"—a hand held against the world. To be touched and to touch; touch is a language unto itself. And it too is a language of power. Thus unto Jupiter, which is also the language of gravity, according—"_

Jupiter shudders upon hearing her name. Shadows shift outside the windows. God continues.

_"—the fist which can give takes too, and gives by taking, or takes by giving. Just as a word is honest or dishonest not by how it is spoken, but by he who speaks it, so is the honesty of touch—"_

There's a storm brewing in God's words. And then it hits.

_"—each of you shall choose. It is certain that the devil is coming. It is certain. It is absolutely certain that the devil is already here."_

Jupiter's throat goes dry. Her fingertips are numb. Distantly, she hears Venus whimper.

_"Parables 1:1. "The devil is only the shadow of man cast from the light of God." The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil. The weather is scheduled for 100 with humidity for tomorrow. And now for the news—"_

Venus and Neptune look at her like they think she'll save them. Like there's a way out. Jupiter's hand twists on the dial and God's voice is drowned in white noise.

And Jupiter knows. She knows.

There's not room in this world for people like her. Not when the voices of the righteous condemn her with their every breath.

Jupiter snaps her hair tie against her wrist, over and over again. She thinks of the girl in the grass, her eyes full of stars. Of the red-haired siren with the eyes of deep, pure blue. Of Neptune, sweet Neptune, with a voice too kind for a soul so hard. She snaps it again. Again. Again.

Her hair tie breaks.

Venus and Neptune are staring at her. She laughs. Of course. Of course.

Something's stirring inside of her. Impatient. Brushing up along her bones and pushing against her lungs. Reaching and itching and prodding. Her heart is surely going to burst.

The Puritans thought everyone was born wicked. Only through rigorous work and prayer could they achieve paradise. Jupiter was born tainted, with spots on her soul and demons whispering in her ear. She thought if she was good and virtuous every day she'd be fixed, she'd be good, she'd be normal. But the feelings never went away. She fought and buried and suppressed but she could never trust be what everyone wanted her to be. She was impure, permanently and forever. There's a voice in her head telling her she's been found out, that all her awful wants are now laid bare.

Everyone is watching, so there's no need for secrecy.

There's pity and fear in equal measure in the eyes of the camp mates that had almost been her friends. In a kinder world they could've been something. They could've been okay. But Jupiter won't be okay, not ever, because she has the devil inside her. What's right is wrong and what's wrong is right.

Neptune, concerned, puts a hand on her shoulder, and oh Lord, Jupiter just wants, she wants, wants—

Jupiter slaps her hand away, makes a harsher kind of contact.

A hand may do many things, after all. Cruel and kind.

"I want to touch," she says, "I want to be touched." There's thunder in her voice. They're afraid. She is too. "I want to hurt. I want to be hurt. And if you feel the same way, then you're just as bad as me."

The stirring is worse. She's beginning to  _change._ The others back away, look at her warily. They still look sad, not hateful. Mourning what could have been. Wishing for a better world. Well, they can want and hope and wish and dream. Jupiter will make, will cause, will claim.

There are hands, her hands, and more, all hers, she realizes, creaking in the wind and extending up to the sky, to the heavens that rejected them. They run through her hair and caress her face. She has a hand for every kind of touch. For holding, for hitting, for petting. Every repressed, hated urge is all her own. she wasn't born good, won't ever be good. She is what she is. This is, perhaps, what she always was deep down inside. She cannot hide anymore, but that's okay, because she's ancient and powerful, an age-old hurricane raging on a distant world.

She lets the tempest brew and swallow her spirit whole. Her body changes, twists, and it's a sinful puberty all over again. She can be whatever she wants, whatever she was told to never, ever want. Even if it's only for a single, fleeting moment. The devil only ever gets one moment, after all.

She only has this time to be what she is, to be free. The reaches her many, many hands out to them, offering, imploring. They might accept her yet. But they don't. They cannot join her, cannot leave the oppressive certainty of their world for the strange, sweet unknown of hers. They run for their radios, prepare to conduct an exorcism. There's no way she can fight them, so she doesn't bother trying, just bends and sways in the storm of herself.

The others' radios crackle and crash against her. She sighs and falls.

She's reborn in a thunderstorm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I love all the WKTD girls with all my heart and soul, but Jupiter was definitely the one I related to the most. Her ending almost had me in tears.  
> I hope you liked it, and I hope I was able to do this lovely game some justice.  
> If you're interested, you can find me on [tumblr](http://imdisappointingmyparents.tumblr.com).  
> Feedback (especially comments!) is always appreciated.  
> Have a good day!


End file.
